Make Your Own Food Can Rotator

The following section describes how to build a
food can rotating system out of some basic materials. I was looking
for a way to maximize the use of a large cabinent I had in the
kitchen and also a way to help us rotate through canned food in an
organized manner. This can organizer was designed to fit
the specific space I had so you'd probably have to tweak it to fit
whatever space you had. Hopefully this provides some helpful ideas if nothing else.
Each bin holds about 14 standard size cans like corn or chili which
gives a total capacity of 252 cans (14 x 3 rows x 6 columns).

The first step you'll want to do is figure out your total outside
dimensions and see how many cans you can reasonably fit. I
used 1/2" plywood to build the entire organizer so I spaced cans
across the empty storage space and determined I could get 6 columns
of cans with about 1" spacing between each can. Once the
organizer was built this provided
1/2" for the vertical plywood spacers and then 1/4" spaces on
each side of the cans.

Next I cut one of the vertical pieces of plywood and created the
layout for the shelves. It helps to get some actual food cans
that you plan to use and make sure there is enough height to clear
the cans at the back end of the shelf. Also, the more slope
you put on the shelves the better the cans will roll when you drop
them in but putting too much slope also reduces the number of bins
you can fit in a given vertical space. Once you have a layout
that you are happy with, mark the top and bottom of each shelf and
mark the end points for the back of the shelf where the cans will
need space to drop.

This is what the layout looked like on my first vertical piece of
plywod.

Stack up 4 or 5 vertical plywood pieces on top of each other so they
can be cut at the same time on a table saw. Once stacked,
drill 1/2" holes at the end of each shelf slot you've marked.

The pictures below show me cutting the shelf slots out of each stack
of plywood pieces. After cutting the first stack you can trace
the slots with a pencil onto the next stack of 4 or 5 pieces of
plywood and then cut those the same way.

Follow the link below to see the final assembly of the can rotation
system.